Introduction -- It is possible to believe...
New technologies born of the human intellect and drive for discovery can be coupled with compassion to create a world where the preoccupation with physical suffering may be replaced with a focus on other challenges, like getting along and looking after our planet. The increasing dysfunction associated with aging is a fundamental aspect of the "human condition" and a fundamental limitation on the "human capacity" to accomplish. The short-term perspectives which result from productive lifespans sandwiched between the ages of 30 and Freedom 55 cannot maintain the culture and civilization we have today, let alone provide for the building of a better world for the future. If we are to deal with the long-term problems of today and advance human culture and civilization, we must repeat the past and increase the length of time that people are alive in order that the potential of the wisdom and experience they attain in life can be explored and applied. Make no mistake, the need is acute and urgent. The existential risks which face humanity today require a common acceptance of the need to cooperate and face these global problems together. Mature perspectives which understand the necessity for cooperation and the need for developing 'win-win' scenarios, rather than using out-moded competitive models is what is required. These mature perspectives are currently assigned to dwindling engagement and locked within increasingly frail physiologies. It is the most urgent task of science that recent discoveries which show that age-related diseases stem from only a few root causes be used as a foundation on which to build a new way of viewing aging and to create therapies to prevent and treat age-related disease to unlock this tremendous resource for the betterment of all.
Never before in the history of our species have we been this close to addressing this biological glass ceiling imposed by a genetic evolution more concerned with the transfer of the information stored in our DNA than the information stored in our brains and cultures. We are now able to envision a world where the suffering and burden of age-related disease is drastically reduced if not eliminated altogether, a world where getting older is truly something that enriches rather than diminishes the individual and society.
I hope you may find the time to visit The Methuslelah Foundation and hear about the efforts of a very unique organization leading the charge in the real War on Aging, and perhaps join with us if you share this vision.
Documentaries, Films and Videos
I happened to be involved in a very interesting project called "Living Forever: The Longevity Revolution". It's uploaded to Google Video and I hope you have a look and enjoy it. It features Michael Rose as the narrator and some leading scientists, and me.
Writings and Other
Life or Death?
Are You an Elephant?
Life Will Find a Way
Interview with John Templeton of the Observer
The High Cost of Aging Poorly
Alice's Morning
Favorite Poetry
I am Not Resigned
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,--but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love, --
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave,
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Favorite Quotes and Passages
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
-Arthur Schopenhauer
A time when all such good things will be for all men may be coming more nearly than we think. Each one who believes that brings the good time nearer; each heart that fails delays it.
-- H. G. Wells
It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all that the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening. We can not see, there is no need for us to see, what this world will be like when the day has fully come. We are creatures of the twilight. But it is out of our race and lineage that minds will spring, that will reach back to us in our littleness to know us better than we know ourselves, and that will reach forward fearlessly to comprehend this future that defeats our eyes. All this world is heavy with the promise of greater things, and a day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars.
-- H.G. Wells; Nature February 6, 1902.
For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin—real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, some thing to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid…then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
-- Alfred d'Souza